Editorials
Ash vs. Everyone - Why Ash Williams Was the Perfect Conduit for a Horror Crossover Universe
Imagine Jason Voorhees wreaking havoc in the aisles of a Crystal Lake S-Mart. The only thing standing between him and the gruesome murders of the teenage employees working there is Ash Williams. Who also works there. Housewares! What a scene! A scene that never happened. Actually, it did happen in both a comic book and a script for a movie we never received. Oh, and Freddy Krueger was there too. Using Jason to gain access to the Necronomicon so that he could read its passages and become more powerful than ever.
There’s so, so much more to Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash and it’s all been covered by Bloody Disgusting before. The reason I bring it up today? Were it not for the alleged unwillingness of competing studios to have their character be the loser of the three way fisticuffs, it totally would have worked. Not only do I believe Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash could have been the greatest horror crossover of all time, I believe it would have opened up the possibilities to do ANY future crossovers. Honestly? I think it would have changed horror forever.
Because of one reason….Ash Williams. Here’s why.
Ash is the Perfect Good Guy for an Idea This Over the Top
First off, a horror icon crossover needs someone to root for. Duh. But to survive something on this level you can’t just be a new camper, random teen or a tiny Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins cosplayer (Corey Feldman in Final Chapter). As great as those have been in the past, it just doesn’t work for something this grandiose. Ash is the one person in horror I could imagine surviving a near death fight with Freddy Krueger only to turn around and have Michael Myers waiting on him outside.
His survivability factor could work over and over again because that is what we’re used to seeing him go through. The man cut off his own hand and replaced it with a chainsaw. He was vortexed into an ancient time and responded by becoming their King! He’s the only good guy horror icon I see as formidable enough to pull this off. Like John McClane in the Die Hard franchise, we know what he’s survived before. We’re used to him being overwhelmed and overmatched and somehow still crawling out the other side.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to tell you that characters like Sidney Prescott from Scream or Laurie Strode from Halloween weren’t formidable. Clearly, they were. They’ve brought more horror icons down than Dimension’s Home Video Department in the 2000s. But this is all a bit more fantastical than those situations and Ash is the one character who could continuously and believably pull it off. He’s the nucleus that would make all this work.
The Necronomicon is a Built-In Script Fix
You know how many failed attempts there were to get a Freddy vs. Jason script ready for the big screen? Enough to write an entire book about them, as Dustin McNeill did with Slash of the Titans. I read most of those scripts and in each of them you could always see the struggle the writers were faced with. “Why are these horror icons fighting?” “How did they cross paths?” They have to spend so much time explaining it. Meanwhile, the audience that just showed up to watch their favorite monsters fight becomes restless. Why is the film spending all this running time setting up peripheral characters and storylines?!
The Necronomicon and Ash can fix all of that. Not just for a Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash movie. For any crossover you want to imagine.
In the comic series, Ash alludes that the Necronomicon lured him to where Freddy and Jason were. You could go that route. Freddy was lured to it for its power. You could go that route. Not to mention, the power of the book gives Ash a puncher’s chance to defeat any of these villains through its passages. A one-armed puncher’s chance (sorry!). The internalized memo pitching Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash said it best: “We’ll be able to avoid all the heavy lifting and hand wringing that comes with bringing disparate storytelling universes together.”
(That’s exactly what led to ten years of development hell for Freddy vs. Jason.)
Styles Make Fights
How many times have you argued with your friends over beers (or Squeeze-It’s if you’re under drinking age or just a person of good taste) about which horror icon would win in a fight? But some just don’t match up well. Especially not script wise. Wouldn’t Jason Voorhees vs. Michael Myers be a pretty quiet movie? Not with Ash there to keep things interesting until they cross paths. A serial killer teen in a Ghostface costume doesn’t stand much of a chance against any of these guys… until he’s possessed by a Deadite. Imagine a possessed “Bad-Ash” version of Ghostface unleashed on a group of Woodsboro students being hunted by Freddy Krueger?!
With Ash being so “plug and play” with any of the horror icons and the Necronomicon to create havoc? You could have a total end of Ghostbusters level of anarchy at your finger tips at any time. Plausibly. Ash is the glue you could use to bring absolutely any horror icon into the mix.
For God’s Sake… How Do You Stop It?
Just to show how sustainable all this really is…here’s a quick Comic-Con Marvel-esque style pitch off the top of my head for some movies this franchise could spawn:
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash — We already have the script. It ends with Freddy sent packing through a Necronomicon portal and Jason buried underneath a frozen lake alongside the Necronomicon. I’ll take a ticket right now.
Ash vs. Jason vs. Michael Myers — After the events of the first film, the town of Crystal Lake recognizes Ash for saving them from their long time nemesis Jason Voorhees. They make him into a local celebrity and he reaps the benefits in pure Ash Williams style. All is well until Jason is resurrected. Ash uses the book to open yet another portal, tackling Jason through it and saving his newfound home (and lady friend, of course). He wakes up in a new reality in the middle of a residential street covered in leaves. Haddonfield. Ash, in a shocking twist, is murdered by these two midway through the film. We spend the rest of the running time watching the forever anticipated battle between Jason and Michael. At the end of the film, however, a shocking post credits sequence shows us Ash in Hell. We hear chains rattling.
Ash vs. Pinhead and the Cenobites — Now, I understand you don’t just go to Hell and meet Pinhead there. But writers are gonna write. Maybe Ash sees Pinhead and friends coming and going as they please and decides to make a deal. However it’s written, try to tell me Ash being in Hell for the opening act of the movie wouldn’t be a hilarious premise! “What the hell am I doing here? Why aren’t I in the other place with the other guy? What’s his damn problem?” It all ends with a teenage murderer opening up a puzzle box he finds at one of his victims’ suburban homes. The camera pans out and the sign says “Woodsboro.”
Okay, I have to stop now. You get the idea and these certainly aren’t the most original thoughts in the world. I’d probably be fired by an Ari Gold type by now if this were an actual thought out pitch. But my point is that I came up with all that in about ten minutes and could have gone on and on. With Ash and the Necronomicon as the north star? Someone, somewhere would have had the horror world in the palm of their hands.
Expectations can run high whenever a buzzworthy filmmaker makes the leap from indie to mainstream. And Radio Silence — Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Chad Villella and former member Justin Martinez — certainly had a lot to live up to after V/H/S. This production collective’s rousing contribution to the 2012 anthology film not only impressed audiences and critics, the same segment also caught the attention of 20th Century. This led to the studio recruiting the rising talent for a hush-hush found-footage project later titled Devil’s Due.
However, as soon as Radio Silence’s anticipated first film was released into the wild, the reactions were mostly negative. Devil’s Due was dismissed as a Rosemary’s Baby rehash but dressed in different clothes; almost all initial reviews were sure to make — as well as dwell on — that comparison. Of course, significant changes were made to Lindsay Devlin’s pre-existing script; directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett offered up more energy and action than what was originally found in the source material, which they called a “creepy mood piece.” Nevertheless, too many folks focused on the surface similarities to the 1968 pregnancy-horror classic and ignored much of everything else.
Almost exactly two years before Devil’s Due hit theaters in January of 2014, The Devil Inside came out. The divisive POV technique was already in the early stages of disappearing from the big screen and William Brent Bell’s film essentially sped up the process. And although The Devil Inside was a massive hit at the box office, it ended up doing more harm than good for the entire found-footage genre. Perhaps worse for Radio Silence’s debut was the strange timing of Devil’s Due; the better-received Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones was released earlier that same month. Despite only a superficial resemblance, the newer film might have come across as redundant and negligible to wary audiences.
Image: Allison Miller in Devil’s Due.
The trailers for Devil’s Due spelled everything out quite clearly: a couple unknowingly conceives a diabolical child, and before that momentous birth, the mother experiences horrifying symptoms. There is an unshakable sense of been-there-done-that to the film’s basic pitch, however, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett knew that from the beginning. To compensate for the lack of novelty, they focused on the execution. There was no point in hiding the obvious — in the original script, the revelation of a demonic pregnancy was delayed — and the film instead gives the game away early on. This proved to be a benefit, seeing as the directors could now play around with the characters’ unholy situation sooner and without being tied down by the act of surprise.
At the time, it made sense for Radio Silence’s first long feature to be shot in the same style that got them noticed in the first place, even if this kind of story does not require it. Still and all, the first-person slant makes Devil’s Due stand out. The urgency and terror of these expectant parents’ ordeal is more considerable now with a dose of verisimilitude in the presentation. The faux realism makes the wilder events of the film — namely those times the evil fetus fears its vessel is in danger — more effective as well. Obviously the set-pieces, such as Samantha pulling a Carrie White on three unlucky teens, are the work of movie magic, but these scenes hit harder after watching tedious but convincing stretches of ordinariness. Radio Silence found a solid balance between the normal and abnormal.
Another facet overlooked upon the film’s initial release was its performances. Booking legitimate actors is not always an option for found-footage auteurs, yet Devil’s Due was a big-studio production with resources. Putting trained actors in the roles of Samantha and Zach McCall, respectively Allison Miller and Zach Gilford, was desirable when needing the audience to care about these first-time parents. The leads managed to make their cursory characters both likable and vulnerable. Miller was particularly able to tap into Samantha’s distress and make it feel real, regardless of the supernatural origin. And with Gilford’s character stuck behind the camera for most of the time, the film often relied on Miller to deliver the story’s emotional element.
Image: Allison Miller in Devil’s Due.
Back then, Radio Silence went from making viral web clips to a full-length theatrical feature in a relatively short amount of time. The outcome very much reflected that tricky transition. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett indeed knew how to create these attention-grabbing scenes — mainly using practical effects — but they were still learning their way around a continuous narrative. The technical limitations of found footage hindered the story from time to time, such as this routine need to keep the camera on the main characters (or see things from their perspective) as opposed to cutting away to a subplot. There is also no explanation of who exactly compiled all this random footage into a film. Then again, that is an example of how the filmmakers strove for entertainment as opposed to maintaining every tradition of found footage. In the end, the directors drew from a place of comfort and familiarity as they, more or less, used 10/31/98 as the blueprint for Devil’s Due’s chaotic conclusion. That is not to say the film’s ending does not supply a satisfying jolt or two, but surely there were hopes for something different and atypical.
Like other big film studios at that time, 20th Century wanted a piece of the found-footage pie. What distinguished their endeavor from those of their peers, though, was the surprising hiring of Radio Silence. Needless to say, the gamble did not totally pay off, yet putting the right guys in charge was a bold decision. Radio Silence’s wings were not completely clipped here, and in spite of how things turned out, there are flashes of creativity in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s unconventional approach to such a conventional concept.
Radio Silence has since bounced back after a shaky start; they participated in another anthology, Southbound, before making another go at commercial horror. The second time, as everyone knows, was far more fruitful. In hindsight, Devil’s Due is regarded as a hiccup in this collective’s body of work, and it is usually brought up to help emphasize their newfound success. Even so, this early film of theirs is not all bad or deserving of its unmentionable status. With some distance between then and now, plus a forgiving attitude, Devil’s Due can be seen as a fun, if not flawed first exposure to the abilities of Radio Silence. And, hopefully, somewhere down the line they can revisit the found-footage format.
Image: Allison Miller and Zach Gilford in Devil’s Due.
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